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Tarquin, or King Herod, to a king of Persia, or a king of Egypt, a king of Jewry, or a king of England. But those circumstances of the description which are properly characteristic, are evidently appropriate to some particular king,—not common to any and to all. Every one of these circumstances, in the psalmist's description of his king, positively exclude King Solomon; being manifestly contradictory to the history of his reign, inconsistent with the tenor of his private life, and not verified in the fortunes of his family. There are, again, other circumstances, which clearly exclude every earthly king, such as the salutation of the king by the title of God, in a manner in which that title never is applied to any created being; and the promise of the endless perpetuity of his kingdom. At the same time every particular of the description, interpreted according to the usual and established significance of the figured style of prophecy, is applicable to, and expressive of some circumstance in the mystical union betwixt Christ and his church. A greater, therefore, than Solomon is here; and this I shall show more particularly in the sequel. It is certain, therefore, that this mystical wedding is the sole subject of this psalm, without any reference to the marriage of Solomon, or any other earthly monarch as a type. And it was with great good judgment, that upon the revision of our English Bible, in the reign of James the First, the Calvinistic argument of this psalm, as it stood in Queen Elizabeth's Bible, was expunged, and that other substituted which we now read in our Bible of the larger size, in these words: "The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom; the duty of the church, and the benefits thereof;" which indeed contain a most exact summary of the whole doctrine of the psalm. And the particulars of this, it is my intention in future dis courses to expound.

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SERMON V.

PSALM xlv. 1.

I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King.

IN my last discourse in this place, I undertook to show,. that the subject of this psalm (which, in its composition, is evidently in the form of an epithalamium, or a marriage song) is the connection between Christ and his church, represented here, as in other parts of Scripture, under the emblem of a marriage. I undertook to show, that this is the immediate and single subject of the psalm, in the first intention of the author, without any reference to the marriage of Solomon, or any earthly monarch, as a type. But as this, which was the unanimous opinion of all, antiquity, has been brought into some, degree of doubt, by the credit which a contrary opinion obtained among Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation, upon the authority of so great a man as Calvin, I thought proper to argue the matter in some detail; and to show, by the particulars of the character of the psalmist's king, that Solomon more especially, but in truth every earthly monarch, is excluded. I might otherwise have drawn my conclusion at once, from that portion of the first verse which I chose for my text: "I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King;" or, as the original might be still more exactly rendered, "I address my performance to the King." It

is a remark, and a very just remark, of the Jewish expositors, and it carries the more weight because it comes from Jews, who, by their prejudices against the Christian name, might have thought themselves interested to keep out of sight a principle so serviceable to the Christian scheme of interpretation,--but it is their remark, and their principle, that the appellation of "the King," in the book of Psalms, is an appropriate title of the Messiah; insomuch, that wherever it occurs, except the context directs it to some special meaning, you are to think of no earthly king, but of the King Messiah. By the admission, therefore, of these Jewish commentators, the Messiah is the immediate subject of this psalm.

My anxiety to settle the question of the immediate subject of this psalm, was for the sake of the greater evidence and perspicuity of the exposition of the whole, verse by verse, which I am now about to deliver: for without a right comprehension of the general subject, it will be impossible that the parts should be understood. And yet the psalm is, perhaps, one of the most important to be well understood in all its parts, of any in the whole collection. Farther, to settle this point of the general subject of the psalm, I must observe, and desire you to bear it in remembrance, that in the prophecies of the Old Testament, which set forth the union between the Redeemer and his church, under the figure of the state of wedlock, we read of two celebrations of that mystical wedding, at very different and distant seasons; or, to be more distinct and particular, we read of a marriage-a separation, on account of the woman's incontinence, i. e. on account of her idolatry-and, in the end, of a remarriage with the woman reclaimed and pardoned. The original marriage was contracted with the Hebrew church, by the institution of the Mosaic covenant, at the time of the Exodus, as we are taught

expressly by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The separation was the dispersion of the Jewish nation by the Romans, when they were reduced to that miserable state in which to this day they remain,-their city laid in ruins, their temple demolished and burned, and the forms of the Mosaic worship abolished. Then it was that the sceptre of ecclesiastical sway (for that is the sceptre meant in Jacob's famous prophecy) departed from Judah. The Jews were no longer the depositaries of the laws and oracles of God; they were no longer to take the lead in matters of religion and worship; and the government even of the Christian church of Jerusalem remained but for a very short time after this in the hands of a bishop of the circumcision;-so strictly was the prophecy fulfilled of the departure of the ecclesiastical sceptre from Judah, the only remnant then visibly extant in the world of the Jewish nation. It is the same event which is predicted in many other prophecies, as the expulsion of the incontinent wife from the husband's house. Her expulsion, however, was to be but temporary, though of long duration: it was a separation, as we should say in modern language, from bed and board, -not an absolute divorce, such as, by the principles of the Mosaic law (which in this point, however, was not perfectly consistent with the original divine law of marriage), set the woman at liberty to unite herself to another man, and, in that event, prohibited her return to her first husband. On the contrary, the same prophecies that threatened the expulsion, maintain the continuance of the husband's property in the separated woman, and promise a reconciliation and final reinstatement of her in her husband's favour. "Where is this bill of your mother's divorcement?" saith the prophet Isaiah. The question implies a denial that any such instrument existed. And in a subsequent part of his prophecies, he expressly announces the reconciliation:

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"Blush not," saith the Redeemer to the pardoned wife, for thou shalt not be brought to reproach; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and the reproach of thy deserted state thou shalt no more remember. For thy Maker is thy husband; Jehovah of Hosts is his name, and he who claims thee is the Holy One of Israel. As a woman forsaken and deeply afflicted, Jehovah hath recalled thee; and as a wife wedded in youth, but afterwards rejected, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I receive thee again." The reconciliation is to be made publicly, by a repetition of the nuptial ceremonies. So we learn from the latter part of the apocalypse. After Christ's final victory over the apostate faction, procla mation is made by a voice issuing from the throne, "The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready," i. e. hath prepared herself, by penitence and reformation, to be re-united to him. And one of the seven angels calls to St. John, "Come hither, and I will show thee the Lamb's wife." Then he shows him" the holy Jerusalem," i. e. the church of the converted Jews. These nuptials therefore of the Lamb are not, as some have imagined, a marriage with a second wife, a Gentile church, taken into the place of the Jewish, irrevocably discarded: no such idea of an absolute divorce is to be found in prophecy. But it is a public reconciliation with the original wife, the Hebrew church, become the mother church of Christendom, notified by the ceremony of a remarriage; for to no other than the reconciled Hebrew church belongs in prophecy the august character of the Queen Consort. The season of this renewed marriage is the second advent, when the new covenant will be established with the natural Israel; and it is this remarriage which is the proper subject of this psalm.

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